http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071018/ap_on_sc/early_seafood Does anyone know on what these Archeologists base their claim that the ground up rocks they found were used for decoration?
Don't know about that one. Do know about the usage of ocher as a dye. Ocher could have been used for many processes, such as curing animal hides (or something like that), but what they found was that it was always red ocher. And it comes in many forms. Hence they concluded that it was used specifically for the colour. Can't remember the exact time point of this find. Could have been something like 70,000 years ago.
how do they know the ground rock was used as decoration and not seasoning for the mussels (like salt)?
I'm an archaeology major (well working to be one), so I'll try to take a stab at this. They've probably compared it (although they didn't mention it in the article) to a similar find, although it said that evidence for this hasn't been found in such an old site, other sites that are much newer could also show evidence for using this pigment as decoration.. Also, if there is no evidence of this pigment being used for painting a cave or something else, it's reasonable to think that the pigment could have been used to decorate one's body. Was I anywhere close?
But isn't it all just speculation anyway? I mean, they didn't leave computer discs to explain what they did, did they? Or high-definition photography? If they used it to paint the head of the male's cock, would we ever know for sure? Or is it just all speculation? Baron Max
Lets call them educated guesses. I'm sure they didn't just say "You know what, this is makeup... because I say so! THATS WHY!"
Certainly, there cannot be many reasons for primitive tribal people to ground up mineral other than to color themselves. Primitive tribes still do it most everywhere. It is still prominent in Africa and was so among the Polynasians in New Zealand and the Australian aborigenese. Generally they ground up red ochre. If that is what they found, they have good evidence for what they claim. We humans ceased to evolve almost 200,000 years ago and all the change since then has been in the culture passing on and improving generation after generation. It's called SOCIAL evolution and is explained in http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com
They have also found "shell kitchens" along the eastern shore of Africa that suggest that people sustained themselves on mussels as they followed the route through Djibouti in the original exodus out of Africa. Mussels are a high protein, low fat food that does not have to be hunted. You simply need to pick them off the rocks by the thousands. I have eard many people talk of the need for early hominids to ingest high levels of protein to develop into humans. We now seem to have ecidence that we were eating mussels 160,000+ years ago - very early in our developmental timeline. I am wondering if this food that could be easily gathered along shorelines could have been the high-protein, low fat food that was the catalyst we needed to evolve into humans in the first place.
This is exactly what I am wondering. Did this archeological team base their findings on such assumptions? They could have ground it for coloring of things other than themselves (art, cave paintings, rituals). The ground mineral could have been the result of another process (forming/sharpening tools [the article did mention finding early blade technology], crushing mussel shells, crushing bone). Like Orleander said, it could have been a mineral seasoning, or it could have been the result of crushing spices (like a mortar and pestle). There are many reasons there could have been crushed rock at the site - why did they choose ths one? The fact that crushed rock was used for this purpose many thousands of years later is not enough alone to base this assumption on.
Yes. A drop in iron that sometimes happens during pregancy could cause that, if this mineral is high in iron, this could explain that. As I said, there are many possible reasons. Does anyone have access to the Nature journal article? Maybe there is more information there.
You are totally wrong there! The changes are epigenetic and non-permanent. We are the same species, HOMOSAPIENS we were almost 200,000 years ago. Slight changes in metabolism and disease resistance mean nothing. The inability of social theorists to come up with an explanation for social evolution and hence to account for all the change we have undergone during all that time leads scientists to pick at straws looking for a genetic explanation and the public to fall for it, but they have failed. There is a natural selection process still going on with us but it involves not the individual but the societies we crowd into. See: http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com
Information or unprovable speculation? We could speculate about this issue from now 'til the cows come home, but does it do any good for anyone? And don't get me wrong, but if this idle speculation and wild-ass guessing is fun, then .....well, okay. Baron Max
